Deborah Hughes: Footprints of Water

Photographer Deborah Hughes displayed her solo exhibition, “Footprints of Water: Photographs and Artistic Expressions of Water’s Wanderings Around the Colorado Plateau,” at the museum from January 10 through June 11, 2022.

“Footprints of Water” exposes and frames the infinite signatures water leaves in its travels through the desert landscape. Mud, ice, clouds, river rapids, decomposing leaves in a stream and even condensation trickling down a window at sunrise become the focus of attention through Hughes’ lens.

“I’ve shifted my attraction away from red rock canyons and mesa vistas during my 26 years of living in southeast Utah,” said Deborah. “Though geologic formations color and characterize the Colorado Plateau, I’ve come to feel that water is the main character, both in its excess as it carves and carries away the landscape, and in its dearth as its absence parches and sharpens the senses like only loss can.”

Deborah wanders the topographically diverse canyons, washes and river corridors in search of sometimes the too much and at other times not enough water. Through abstract compositions and impressionist movement techniques she’s dubbed “camera dowsing,” she captures what catches her aqueous humor. Deborah’s photographic art invites the viewer into a more intimate and visceral experience of water’s traverses.